1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multiwave optical buffer using a loop mirror, and in particular to an improved multiwave optical buffer using a loop mirror which can store cells having low priority, sequentially output the cells in a preferable time, and arrange and output cells which are wave-multiplexed in a wave-multiplexed system and inputted at the same time, on a time axis in accordance with an electrical external control signal, in order to prevent conflicts among the cells to be outputted to an identical channel on a high-speed time division multiplexing local network or backbone.
2. Description of the Background Art
Recently, a demand of the users for high quality service has been sharply increased, thus requiring a high-speed network. However, it is difficult to prevent conflicts among cells in accordance with an electrical method by a photoelectric conversion on a predetermined switching node. In addition, an optical buffering method by electric control has been suggested (K. L. Hall, Member, IEEE, and K. A. Rauschenbach, Member, IEEE, xe2x80x9cAll-Optical Buffering of 40-Gb/s Data Packetsxe2x80x9d, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters. Vol. 10, No. 3, March 1998).
According to the optical buffering method, when input cells are stored, 90% of the cells are duplicated and discarded, 10% of the cells are inputted to a loop and reproduced to 100%, 90% of the reproduced cells are discarded again, and 10% of the cells are inputted to the loop and reproduced to 100%. There is a disadvantage in that the above-described method additionally requires a structure for processing the discarded cells.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a multiwave optical buffer using a loop mirror which can transmit cells to a preferable node in accordance with electric control without causing conflicts among the cells, when the cells having various waves reach a single node at the same time on a high-speed network.
In order to achieve the above-described object of the present invention, there is provided a multiwave optical buffer using a loop mirror, including: a loop mirror wave-dividing and storing cells inputted from an input terminal at an initial stage, and reflecting the cells in an input direction; a cell input unit controlling a gain and optical power of the cells reflected by the loop mirror, and re-inputting the cells into the loop mirror; and a controller controlling an external output according to waves in regard to the cells inputted and stored in the loop mirror.